The present invention involves an apparatus for providing the appearance of a decoratively lit cone-shaped tree. It is particularly useful for providing an outdoor decorative Christmas tree in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner. The invention may also be used to provide a variety of decorative arrangements of lights.
Each Christmas season, many people are faced with task of stringing lights on trees, whether natural or artificial, whether indoors or out. Typical efforts involve wrapping an extended length of lights around the tree in inverted spiral fashion. Most methods involve utilizing the branches of the tree as support for the lights, which, in turn, involves attaching the string of lights to the branches in some way. Since the most commonly decorated tree is the evergreen, this process is often painful, difficult and time consuming.
There are several devices known in the art which simplify to some extent this process of decorating trees. A common approach is to provide a central electrical connection for discrete sets of lights which are then supported along the length of the Christmas tree. Where the central connection is located at the top of the Christmas tree, the discrete strings of lights may be merely draped along the length of the Christmas tree. Another apparatus disclosed provides a "net" of lights which may be wrapped around the Christmas tree. In each of these devices, however,the Christmas tree branches provide support for each of the strings of lights utilizd. This still requires the actual placement of the lights in the tree and the removal therefrom when the decorative lighting is to be removed.
Outdoor lighting displays are often desired in urban settings, such as in shopping centers or in office buildings, where natural trees do not occur. Lighting decoration is often effected by importing a cut natural tree or an artificial tree, by decorating other objects with strings of lights, or by creating an independent display of lights. In addition to the problems discussed above, such displays require additional time and effort in providing the supports to be used and in creating the decorative designs.
An object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus to simplify the decoration of Christmas trees.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a decorative light display structure whereby each of a plurality of strings of lights may be linearly displayed in a variety of patterns.
A further objective of the present invention is to provide a decorative light display structure which will simulate the appearance of a decoratively lit tree.
Still another objective is to provide a decorative light support apparatus which may be permanently mounted.